CPD (Continuing Professional Development) Records are essential for all assessors. If you work for a learning provider that is a registered centre with an awarding body then they should almost certainly require you to have an up to date CPD Record. Some organisations may give you a template to go by when it comes to creating a CPD Record but some may not… So I thought I’d be super helpful and show you how to create your own! You can thank me later…

What do I need in my CPD Record?

First of all, you need to think about what needs to be in your CPD Record. An obvious one would be the date, this is so you can track and keep a clear and concise record of when you may have done some additional training. For example; did it last over a period of time, say a month? Or was it just an hour long? This brings me on to my next point that will benefit your record, making it easy to read as well.

How many hours of study was it? It could be a three-day course or a 5-hour study programme. By tallying up the number of hours it helps to keep an order to your record which will help to make it easier to read if you ever need to refer back. What did you do? Was it an online course? By stating what you did is a good start as it can create a snowball effect of other things to add in on your CPD Record. From just that little starting point you can ask yourself questions, why did you do it? What did you learn from doing it? How will I use this moving forward? There are few things to add to your record already!

The Layout

The layout of your CPD Record is key. You’ve got to think about who may see your record as it may not just be you it could be employers, prospective employers etc. Therefore, it needs to be laid out in a simple but professional way so that it is easy to read and doesn’t look untidy. Now you’ve got all the factors you want to put into your record, you need to create it. There are many ways of creating a CPD Record but we found the easiest way was to use word processing software such as Microsoft Word.

Next, all you need to do is the following;

Open up a blank document on Microsoft Word

Using the toolbar at the top select ‘Insert’ and then click on the table. This will help you to create the table.

Once you have your table, you can then start to add all the factors you looked at in the first section of this blog.

And there you have it your own CPD Record as easy as that! Below is an example of what it should look like using Microsoft Word and adding in all the factors from above.

Our example of a layout of a CPD Record

We hope this has helped you to create a CPD Record in the simplest of ways! As well as helping you to create a CPD Record why not check out ways to keep it up to date too.